Mt. Emmons

The snowpack structure on SE aspects near treeline could produce wet slabs if it gets flooded by meltwater during a significant warmup. Today didn't seem to be warm enough.  The only steep terrain we traveled in had avalanched late during the Cupid Crusher or during subsequent wind events and showed no signs of instability.

No signs of instability underfoot; some rollerballs on northerlies below 9,500' due to greenhousing this morning.

Looked at the crown of the large persistent slab that ran on a SE aspect into Racoon Basin.  The ~70cm slab appeared to fail on small-grained (.5 mm) facets above the early February crust, and once it got moving, gouged the crust out in some areas.  Recent meltwater was largely localized to the top few inches, though there were some refrozen ice lenses near the bottom of the slab, indicating that meltwater had percolated through the slab in some areas.  The weak layer remained dry midday.  

Crusty snow surfaces were slow to soften this morning due to cloud cover, but as we were finishing our tour around 1 pm, ski pen was about 4" to 6" into wet snow on low-elevation southerlies.